Monday, July 16, 2007

Joe Morgan Is A Motherfucking Idiot

There are people out there who are better at this, but I just don't care.

Anyway, last night I watched the Phillies get their 10,000th loss in a manner that was perfect for it. And I did my best to ignore the commentary. But my best was not quite enough, because through my pot and Sunday apathy induced haze, I heard Joe Morgan and Jon Miller talk about the struggles of my beloved New York Mets. All Miller really did was note the fact that they haven't played that well the last month. But Joe couldn't leave well enough alone and had to chime in with something along the lines of "That shows what a good job Willie Randolph did last year when the Mets had bad pitching. This year their pitching is even worse and they're still in first place."

God almighty what a stupid thing to say. What an absolute mind-meltingly dumb statement. Anyone who's been paying attention even one Tiny Iota would think that Joe Morgan would have to be sniffing glue to make that statement. Onto the useless statistical evidence.

Last year, the Mets used something like 100,000 starting pitchers in the first month of the season. Jose Lima got four starts. Let me repeat that: Jose Lima. Got four starts. I was there for one and he gave up two homeruns to Dontrelle Willis, including a grand slam. The following illustrious hurlers also took the mound for the Mets last year: Alay Soler (8 starts, 6.00 ERA. 1.57 WHIP), Brian Bannister (6 starts, 4.26 ERA, 1.47 WHIP), Victor Zambrano (5 starts, 6.75 ERA, 1.68 WHIP), Geremi Gonzalez (3 starts, 7.71 ERA, 1.92 WHIP, poor spelling). And those were just the castoffs and irregulars. There was also Steve Trachsel, the most useless 15 game winner in the history of rounders and baseball put together. That is not good pitching, yet the Mets got good pitching from Tom Glavine, El Duque, John Maine and their bullpen, ending the season with a 4.14 team ERA, third in the NL.

This year, the Mets have not had to start a trillion castoff starting pitchers. The only crappy pitchers have been Jason Vargas (2 starts, 12.19 ERA, 1.83 WHIP), Chan Ho Park (1 start, 15.75 ERA, 2.00 WHIP) and Dave Williams (1 start, 21.60 ERA, 4.20 WHIP. Which is appropriate because he got lit up). They've also had a disappointment in Mike Pelfrey and Tom Glavine has shown his age. However, John Maine put up All-Star caliber numbers in the first half, Ollie Perez has struck out twice the number of batters he's walked and El Duque has gotten incredibly lucky, giving up only 61 hits in 84 innings (.205 BAA) despite having played Little League with Julio Franco and Jesus. The bullpen has also been solid, anchored by the absolutely unconscious Billy Wagner, who won't win the Rolaids Relief award because he'll have great peripherals and only like, 32 saves. They have a 3.86 team ERA, which is...third in the National League.

I won't bother getting in to why the Mets are worse this year, I'll just say the offense isn't performing. Because this isn't really about the Mets. It's about Joe Morgan. Joe Morgan has a national platform to spew this kind of idiocy, seemingly carte blanche. I mean, why would he possibly think the Mets have bad pitching this year? Did he just make it up? Did he just get lazy and assume the Carloses were pulling their weight? Did he flip a coin? Seriously, help me out here people. Joe Morgan doesn't deserve his job if he's going to put this little thought into it. If you don't know something about a team, don't just pull an answer out of your ass and expect to be right. Because it's gonna stink.